Eastern Iowa Woman Wins $30,000 Lottery Prize
Peggy Hayes Wins Top Prize in '$30,000 Holiday Crossword' Game
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CLIVE, Iowa — An eastern Iowa woman said she was too excited to sleep after winning a $30,000 lottery prize.
"I couldn't sleep all night, but it was really great," Peggy Hayes of Bellevue told officials on Monday as she claimed her prize at the lottery's Cedar Rapids regional office. "It was just awesome."
Hayes, 70, won the second top prize in the Iowa Lottery's "$30,000 Holiday Crossword" scratch game. She purchased her winning ticket at Bormann's Neighborhood Pitstop, 802 S. Riverview St. in Bellevue, located near her beauty salon.
Hayes spotted the new, holiday-themed scratch game and decided to buy a ticket, which she scratched later that night around bedtime. Once she realized it was a big winner, she woke up her son and asked him to check it, then took the ticket to a nearby store to have an employee verify the win on the store's lottery terminal.
"She looked at me like she was looking right through me, then she looked down again, then she looked at me again and said, 'Do you know how much this is?'" Hayes recalled with a laugh. "I said, 'Yeah, $30,000?' She said, 'Yeah, $30,000!'"
Hayes said she plans to put part of her winnings toward the renovation of a rental home and save the rest.
The $30,000 Holiday Crossword is a $3 scratch game that features 17 top prizes of $30,000 and overall odds of 1 in 3.52.
Players can enter nonwinning holiday scratch tickets into the lottery's Warehouse Dash® Play It Again® promotion from now through 9:59 a.m. on Jan. 4. The promotion will award $200,000 in cash prizes, including a $100,000 grand prize, and four trips to Chicago for a 90-second Warehouse Dash shopping spree. For rules and complete details, visit www.ialottery.com.
Warehouse Dash is a registered trademark of Hinda, Inc.
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